This perspective can be useful for BESAV teams to:
• strengthen justifications and arguments for the value of protecting, restoring or enhancing biodiversity and ecosystem services.
• identify and sort out the heterogeneous value orders that stakeholders mobilize when they react to BES-based claims and actions or justify their own behavior when dealing with the ecological issue.
• reflect on ways to help actors articulate and consolidate new value compromises.
Case Study 4 illustrates with a fictionalized example inspired by a real-world case study:
Example 4: Negotiating a regional action plan for protection of coral reefs and fisheries
A BESAV team is helping three NGOs create a co-management plan for a large marine area that is home to one of the highest density of coral reefs in the world. The reproduction of key fisheries, such as tuna, depends on these reefs. The team needs to provide relevant BES knowledge and participate as experts in the intense negotiations between 6 neighboring countries and other stakeholders.
The left part of the diagram represents the BESAV team and the different ways they have so far used, or plan to use, BES concepts and knowledge to argue for the importance of taking ecosystems and biodiversity into account in decision-making. It is important to clarify here that the theory does not invite BESAV team or other stakeholders to ‘betray’ their core beliefs (i.e.
the intrinsic value of care for nature held by many conservation practitioners) by replacing them tactically with other orders of value in their discourses and deliberations in an argumentative struggle. The theory does not deal with issues related to the strategic or deceitful use of values by different actors. It rather recognizes and puts forward that the treatment of issues in open, democratic societies is based on the coexistence of equally important but contradicting orders of value, and on managing the tensions between them, for instance by finding value compromises.
14 This ‘environmental order of value’ is not included in Economies of Worth, but advocated by others – see (Mermet 2007; Mermet, Laurans, and Leménager 2014, 240–243; Thévenot, Moody, and Lafaye 2000). Whether the environmental order meets the conditions to become a stand-alone order of value is debated – see (Godard 2004; Lafaye and
Thevenot, 1993; Latour, 1998)
Some tips about using this diagram:
• Do not classify people or organizations in pre-assigned categories. Every type of actor and individual can use different orders of value depending on the situation. For example, in a company, on the same day, a manager can use the market order to ask for support for a project from the board of directors and the domestic order to request holidays with his family. Hence, a BESAV team does not always have to argue only in terms of the environmental order’s ‘care for nature’.
• In the course of a project, a team can use BES knowledge in different orders of value in their arguments, with different champions to push for change. For example, different orders of worth may be used in a participatory workshop with stakeholders, a high-level bilateral meeting with government officials, a written report to donors, or a field visit with local communities.
Case Study 4.1:
The BESAV team has used various orders of value advocate for a marine BES management plan.
(1) The BESAV team is motivated by the ‘environmental order: a desire to protect this important place for marine biodiversity. This motivation is expressed in the team’s work plan, shared with the three NGOs who support the project.
(2) To launch the project, the team used the ‘order of fame’ to garner support from the six national governments. At high-level international meetings on sustainable economic development the team spoke directly to countries’ leaders about increasing their reputation and visibility by engaging in the management plan to protect coral reefs.
How can I frame ecosystem services assessment to gain trac3on among stakeholders who hold mul3ple contradictory orders of value?
Inspired by the Economies of Worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006)
BES assessment
team
Actor 2:
How do I argue about BES values? How does my interlocutor speak
about BES values, or react to my arguments?
Order of inspiration (spiritual, aesthetic beauty)
Civic order (law and democratic procedures)
Industrial order (effectiveness and efficiency)
Market order (mutually advantageous trade-offs, commercial competition)
Domestic order (traditional values and familiar practices)
Order of fame (media visibility and reputation)
A tentative emerging environmental order (care for nature)
Actor 1:
Actor 3:
Actor 4:
(3) To obtain the support of the World Bank and the European Union, the team highlighted in a report the recreational and tourism values of coral reefs and the need to preserve their aesthetic beauty, mobilizing primarily the ‘order of inspiration’ but also the market values of tourism.
(4) Since fishing in this nursery area threatens the ability of tuna to reproduce and grow, the team engaged with the large tuna fisheries. They used essentially ‘market order’ justifications showing the economic risk of tuna population collapse if coral reefs are significantly degraded. They used BES modeling and mapping to define marine zones that protect tuna nurseries and ensure sustainable fisheries revenues.
The right hand side of the diagram represents other actors (partners, stakeholders, local community representatives, government officials, funders, etc.). The diagram can describe how each actor justifies their positions, behaviors and decisions when deliberating in good faith. All actors can use multiple orders of value. For example, a mining company may predictably mobilize the market or industrial orders of value but may also justify behavior using the domestic order, for example, by arguing that their activities support traditional livelihoods. Using this diagram can help BESAV teams to pay attention to: (1) the orders of value embedded in actors’ justifications and claims about the BES issue; (2) how others react to the BESAV team’s arguments and presentations; and, (3) how other actors speak to each other about the issue.
Case Study 4.2:
The large fisheries companies reacted positively to arguments based on ‘market order’ and agreed to help develop the management plan. However, the team started to receive requests to meet with local NGOs and syndicates representing small-scale community fisheries. They felt that (1) discussions about the management plan had only happened at a very high level and (2) the role of coral reefs in supporting local, subsistence and small-scale commercial fishing had been overlooked. The BESAV team started to focus on local fisheries in their assessments and consult with local community fisheries representatives.
What can a BESAV team do to resolve disagreements or clashes of value? This perspective highlights two possibilities:
(1) When a conflict arises between two people that share the same ‘order of value’, the conflict can be resolved by applying an appropriate ‘test’ to the situation. For instance, a conflict between two individuals who both refer to the ‘industrial order’ when debating protection of a watershed, can likely be resolved through data, and indicators, that evaluate the most efficient level of protection. The BESAV team can provide knowledge to help solve such a disagreement.
(2) When there is a conflict over which order of value to use to judge a situation or make a decision, the BESAV team can help stakeholders build compromises. Compromises can be hybrids where different orders of value are articulated together (e.g. “this project must not only respect the beauty of the landscape (order of inspiration), it must also provide economic revenue to the company that provides jobs to local people (market order)”).
Case Study 4.3:
The World Bank and the European Union agreed to support the marine management plan initiative.
They were convinced by evidence in the report on the aesthetic values of the coral reefs (‘order of inspiration’) and the potential to support sustainable tourism. Yet they disagree on the financial support to provide. They contest the methods used to estimate the monetary value of cultural ecosystem services (cultural heritage value, recreation and tourism value and aesthetic values), on which the funding request was based. Using a different methodology, they reach a lower value estimate. On this basis, they have decided on lower funding for the project. Given this conflict was based on the same order of value, the team proposed an independent expert be asked for a third opinion.
The 6 countries reacted positively and all decided to help develop a management plan, judging that it would improve their regional and international reputation and visibility. During the project, the team began discussions with the countries. During the meetings, they presented different BES maps of the marine/coral reef zone highlighting areas that need protection.One country developed a confrontational position, threatening the overall negotiation process, based on the ‘civic order’. The country’s officials said that the definition of zones of ecological importance and the roles of each country should take into account maritime political borders (which are disputed in the region).
5.3. Using the diagram
A BESAV team can use this diagram to reflect on how to convey messages and arguments on the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services in ways that resonate.
Use the diagram to:
• Connect the BESAV team to the orders of values already used, or that the team intends to use to justify their claims, their activities, or future plans.
• Connect actors that the team is in discussion with, to the orders of value they use to justify their own actions, decisions and behaviors.
This diagram can be used iteratively, from left to right. Sequence the team discussions to reflect on:
(1) orders of value used in the project so far with specific actors (on the left side of the visual);
(2) orders of values expressed by other actors about the BES issue at hand, or in reaction to the team’s arguments and claims;
(3) new ways the team could advocate for BES activities using the order of value that matters most to other actors;
(4) current clashes of values and ways to resolve them.
It may help to reflect on the following questions when using the diagram:
(1) What orders of value have we used to argue for protecting biodiversity and ecosystem services and to make the case for our solutions? With whom have we used each order of value, in what situation?
(2) As we listen to other actor, what orders of value can we identify? On what ‘shared common principle’ do they seem to base their decisions, or justify their actions?
(3) How have others reacted when we made our arguments about BES? Did they use the same order of value as us? If they used another one, can we reformulate our claims on the basis of that order of value?
(4) Are disagreements among stakeholders based on the same or different order of value?
(5) If it is a disagreement based on the same order of value (‘a dispute’), can we help resolve it using BES tools and methods?
(6) If it is a ‘disagreement’ on which order of value, can BES assessment tools and activities help find workable compromises?
Case Study 4.4:
The BESAV team reflected that:
(1) They still need to use the ‘environmental order’ in discussions with partner environmental NGOs.
(2) They have mobilized ‘order of inspiration’ arguments in their negotiations for support from the EU and World Bank. However, a ‘dispute’ emerged about the methods and criteria used to quantify the aesthetic and the cultural service values of the coral reefs in monetary terms. It is therefore logical to seek the help of an expert in economic valuation to review the methods and help reach agreement.
(3) Use of the ‘market order’ and ‘domestic order’ with large fisheries and local community fisheries has proved so far effective in discussions.
(3) Discussions with the national governments have been driven forward by motivation to improve reputation and gain visibility (‘order of fame’). The countries were close to an agreement on co-managing the marine area without consideration of borders. This cooperation is now threatened by one country that invoked the ‘civil order’ to question the legality of the management plan on the issue of national maritime political borders. To solve this ‘disagreement’, the team needs to reach a
‘compromise’ that articulates the ‘order of fame’ and the ‘civic order’. One option is that participation and contribution of each country be adjusted based on the proportion of areas of high ecological importance within the boundaries of its legal national maritime zone. This would not undermine the visibility and reputation of the management plan for excellent multilateral cooperation on an important environmental question. It may also address the concern raised about national maritime borders.
How can I frame ecosystem services assessment to gain trac3on among stakeholders who hold mul3ple contradictory orders of value?
Inspired by the Economies of Worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006)
BES
How do I argue about BES values? How does my interlocutor speak
about BES values, or react to my arguments?
Domestic order (traditional values and familiar practices)
Order of fame (media visibility and reputation)
A tentative emerging environmental order (care for nature)
Actor 1:
Improving human well-being by renegotiating institutions 6.
Section 6 Key Messages
- Institutional approaches to local ecosystem use can be useful to analyse how, a local community or group of individuals uses its surrounding natural environment for its own well-being.
- These institutional approaches can be useful for BESAV teams to reflect on how their BES knowledge and activities affect institutions and rules to benefit local communities’ ability to use their natural environment for their well-being.
- The Environmental Entitlements Framework from Leach, Mearns and Scoones suggests that individuals transform environmental goods and services into ‘capabilities’ (specific component of well-being) through a process of ‘endowment’ and ‘entitlement’. Institutions (formal and
informal, macro and micro) mediate each step of this process.
- Ostrom’s Common-Pool Resources theory focuses on analysis of the rules and infrastructures that condition access of individuals to resources and the benefits they provide.
6.1. A short introduction to the Environmental Entitlement Framework and Common-Pool Resources theory
The Environment Entitlements Framework (Leach, Mearns and Scoones, 1999) focuses on the ability of people and local communities to improve their well-being through use of natural resources. The theory builds on critiques of community-based natural resource management that local communities are not static or homogeneous and the local environment is dynamic. The analytical framework can be used to examine how institutions at different scales, both formal (e.g.
legal systems and rules) and informal (e.g.customary property rights, social conventions and norms, local codes of behavior), influence the way local people gain access to and control over environmental goods and services, and how they use them to achieve well-being. It is grounded in
‘entitlement analysis’ (Sen, 1981) to understand how individuals and groups improve their well-being.
The Environment Entitlement Framework helps identify: (1) different components of people’s well-being such as health, nutrition, shelter, education, knowledge, sociability, clothing, emotions (‘capabilities’); and, (2) how people achieve these components of well-being through access and control over environmental goods and services. Individuals and local communities convert environmental goods and services into ‘capabilities’ through :
• Endowments: actors’ rights and resources such as land, capital, easy access, labor, skills, that they can mobilize to gain access and control over environmental goods and services.
• Entitlements: utilities that people derive from environmental goods and services such as direct use of water, food, fuel resources, market value, ecosystem services such as landslide risk mitigation or pollution treatment, etc.)
Ostrom’s ‘Common-Pool Resources’ theory also focused on the role of institutions and infrastructure, such as irrigation systems and roads. This theory shows that if multiple users of a shared ecological resource (a forest, a fishery, a watershed, etc.) want to avoid overuse and ecological degradation, they need to establish systems of rules and control to coordinate behaviour (Ostrom, 1990; Ostrom et al., 1994). The theory insists on rules and infrastructure that (1) affect access to resources and (2) regulate how benefits from resource use are shared among individuals of a given community, and between the community and other external actors (e.g. a public institution, a private sector player).
BESAV practitioners often want not only to improve environmental outcomes, but also human well-being. The Environment Entitlement Framework and Common-Resources Pool theory can help BESAV teams to analyze how institutions, rules and infrastructure affect how local people can use resources for their livelihoods. It helps reflect on two key questions: (1) how will institutional and infrastructural changes recommended through a BESAV project affect local communities’ well-being? (2) (how) can BESAV information be used to renegotiate institutions and rules in ways that improve both ecosystem management and people’s well-being?
6.2. Applying to BESAV projects: how do existing institutions affect ecosystem